NAIS if Implimented will wipeout family farms

National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

The USDA in conjunction with corporate farms and makers of the equipment for microchiping are trying to put this system into place. Disease control, trace an animal back to it's origin within 48 hours is the main theme you hear. What they don't tell you is how it will limit your choice for food sources; because it will just about eliminate the small family farm. We loose the family farms we will loose animal breeds because the corporate farm raises just one maybe two different breeds for market.

Why will the family farms go under? The cost of having micro chips in every animal and the paperwork. More so the paperwork, filing has to done within 24 hours if any animal comes or leaves the property, by way of selling, butchering, wandering thru the fence & coming back. Don't know half the time about the ones that go thru a fence for a few acorns they see on the other side & then come back. (their satalite equipment will know & can impliment fines for me for not filing the paperwork-up to $1000 a day)

This year 50+ chickens were put in the freezer for our use. Under NAIS I would have to chip everyone of those birds. They are bought as chicks from a hatchery, they would be required to put a $15 (average cost) chip...that cost would be passed onto me. Pretty expense chicks. If I raised my own chicks, I would be required to put a $15 chip in each bird. Paperwork filed within the 24 hours as the chicks hatched. And again paperwork filed on each and every bird within 24 hours of being butchered that they had been butchered and now in my freezer. How am I going to put the chip in? How will I be able to scan each aniamal? I am going to have to buy a scanner...$500 minimum. Could let the vet scan....that would mean loading up the birds...more paperwork required within 24 hours now that they have left the farm. Or have her come out here & be charged for $1 a mile travel fee...($80 for me) plus the fee she would charge on each animal to be scanned.

To chip every livestock animal I have at the moment, would be a minimum of $1500. Every spring with new kids being born that's an additional $1200 a year. Plus the filing of 75 papers for each new animal born on the place within 24 hours of their birth. During kidding I may average 3 to 4 hours of sleep a day for several weeks at a time.

What I find interesting is that corporate farms will only be required to have one chip per lot and there might be as many as 200 animal in a lot. Which means less cost & less paperwork...one filing per lot as the animals are loaded up for the slaughterhouse.

Also interesting, is the fact that this system started being pushed as larger numbers of people were buying more of their food from small farms.

Vanilla Beans

You can find them in the spice aisle, 2 beans locked in a bottle costing around $10.00. They didn’t get bought often; maybe around the holidays. One bean was used to make flavored sugar, the other was saved to be put in a batch of homemade ice cream the following summer. They are skinny and hard, making it a bit of a challenge to split them lengthwise in order to scrape the seeds out of the pod. Seemed well worth the trouble and cost while eating that bowl of ice cream though, and you can soak the pod in a tiny bit water in order to make them easier to cut open.

The vanilla bean is the fruit of an orchid. After the vines are planted, it will take 3 years for the first flowers to appear. The flowers must be hand pollinated and the long green pods are hand picked about 9 months later. Then they go through a curing process that takes several more months. No wonder they are so expensive.

There are places to buy Madagascar vanilla beans in bulk. To purchase a ¼ pound gives me about 25 beans for just under $24. This included the shipping costs, making them less than a $1 a bean! The real treat came with the beans themselves. Even though they had been dried, their averaged length was 7 inches, plus they were soft, pliable, and slightly oily with the most intense mouth-watering vanilla aroma.

With the cost more affordable there are several ways the beans are used here now. Homemade Vanilla Extract, Kahlua, Crème Brulee, Flavored Sugar, Maple Syrup, Honey. There are endless possibilities of flavoring items or using the scraping in a variety of recipes dishes.

You will see many recipes for vanilla extract calling for about 3 beans per cup of alcohol ready to use in 4 to 8 weeks. Although it is good, this type is really little more than flavored booze. The following recipe is closer to FDA requirements for a true single fold extract without any additives.

Vanilla Extract Recipe – 1x fold

1 Cup Vodka
6 Vanilla Beans
1 lidded glass jar

Split the beans lengthwise using a knife or kitchen shears. If desired you may cut the length of the beans so they can be covered with the vodka easily.
Place beans in the jar & pour the vodka making sure the beans are completely covered.
Store in a cool, dark place, shake daily for the first week. Then shake occasionally for the next 6 months.

Like wine if you allow the extract to age, it will continue to add body and depth of flavor for 2 years. And extract will keep indefinitely if kept in a cool dark place. You may experiment with substituting the vodka with rum or brandy for different flavored extracts.



Day One


Mixture at 9 months

Persimmon Lore

Along our fence lines and edges of the wooded area you will find wild persimmon trees. Every year by mid September the goats will do their daily persimmon run. Once milking is over and everyone is turned outside, away they go on a dead run to be the first under the closest persimmon tree. The last ones to arrive will learn quickly to just run on up to the next tree so they can see what has fallen since the previous day.

Not sure how they can eat them before they have fully ripen, because they will freeze my face into a pucker for a few seconds if their readiness is misjudged. When ripe they are pleasant enough; but generally a handful will satisfy any sort of craving for me till next year.

The fruit are full of seeds and every fall I will bring back a few seeds to cut open to see how well they predict the winter. The seeds are not easily sliced into, care must be taken or you’ll be slicing more than the seed. You have to stand them on their edge & slice thru the narrowest part in order to be able to see what shape the kernel has taken that year.

If the kernel is shaped like a spoon, expect lots of wet snow. A fork shape predicts a milder winter with powdery snow. And the shape of a knife indicates ice and/or bitter winds. There have been combination shapes for me. A fork with one of the tines elongated that looks like a knife, and a kernel that has looked like a spoon; but with 3 tines at the end…much like those plastic things you will get in some fast food joints that is a spoon/fork combo utensil.

More times than not they have been right on the mark with what to expect. This year they were showing a spoon, and we have already had a few days of flurries with November ending with a light blanket of snow on the ground.